User login

You are here

Ghana Must Go (Hardcover)

March 2013 Indie Next List

“Readers know when they are in the presence of something special and brilliant. It is a voice familiar and kind, a plot careful and unraveling, a set of characters whose hearts pound between the covers. Selasi delivers a powerful debut about family, race. and the nature of story in this contemporary novel, set in neighborhoods from Brookline, Massachusetts, to Lagos, Nigeria. A literary descendant of Zadie Smith and Arundhati Roy, Selasi is a new force in the global community of readers.”
— Nicole Magistro, The Bookworm of Edwards, Edwards, CO

Description

Kweku Sai is dead. A renowned surgeon and failed husband, he succumbs suddenly at dawn outside his home in suburban Accra. The news of Kweku's death sends a ripple around the world, bringing together the family he abandoned years before. "Ghana Must Go" is their story. Electric, exhilarating, beautifully crafted, Ghana Must Go is a testament to the transformative power of unconditional love, from a debut novelist of extraordinary talent. Moving with great elegance through time and place, "Ghana Must Go "charts the Sais circuitous journey to one another. In the wake of Kweku's death, his children gather in Ghana at their enigmatic mother's new home. The eldest son and his wife; the mysterious, beautiful twins; the baby sister, now a young woman: each carries secrets of his own. What is revealed in their coming together is the story of how they came apart: the hearts broken, the lies told, the crimes committed in the name of love. Splintered, alone, each navigates his pain, believing that what has been lost can never be recovered until, in Ghana, a new way forward, a new family, begins to emerge. "Ghana Must Go "is at once a portrait of a modern family, and an exploration of the importance of where we come from to who we are. In a sweeping narrative that takes us from Accra to Lagos to London to New York, "Ghana Must Go" teaches that the truths we speak can heal the wounds we hide.

About the Author

TAIYE SELASI was born in London and raised in Massachusetts. She holds a B.A. in American studies from Yale and an M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford. The Sex Lives of African Girls (Granta, 2011), Selasi s fiction debut, will appear in "Best American Short Stories 2012." She lives in Rome."